With one of the lowest employment rates in all of the UK (just over 4% as of February 2021), Gloucester has long been a city that oozes success. Like the cathedral standing tall in the centre, it is a city that rewards hard work and building businesses brick by brick in order to touch the skies.
This was exemplified in the latter months of 2021 when Gloucester was revealed as the best city to start a remote business. For all the people who had conceptualised a business idea from their bedroom during those uncertain two years, Gloucester promised to transform them into a living, breathing business, eliminating the empty void that often separates business aspirations from reality.
Table of Contents
Business Confidence In Gloucester
With this being said, however, just a month ago, it was revealed that business confidence in Gloucester had fallen for the third consecutive month. According to Lloyds Bank, which has headquarters in the city of Gloucester, confidence declined nine points to 16% in August alone, which is substantial when considering the confidence rate of 24% during the height of 2021’s struggling business landscape.
Starting A Business In Gloucester
Starting a business from scratch in Gloucester, then, does not look as rose-tinted as it might have done a year ago. That is not to say that new businesses must look elsewhere, however. Business confidence across the country has been in a steady decline since the cost of living crisis.
Over the last few months, it would be a hard task to find any county that can declare confidence on a rise, especially when it comes to external factors that threaten to derail them. As ever in business, it is a fight against the tide and a determination to keep on track for when things get better.
Starting A Business In 2022’s Landscape
In this way, Gloucester is still as good a city as any to start a new business, so long as it is the right fit for the business itself. To explain further, it is unwise to start a business in a city simply due to stats and figures. It must be a good fit for the business to thrive and form relations amongst prospective customers.
For instance, if it is a B2C company, the target market must surely allow for a majority of Gloucester’s population in order to efficiently inform marketing strategies. Similarly, if it is a B2B company, there must be an ongoing demand for the specific service in order to make B2B loyalty programs effective, and the reward of repeated custom reach higher than the cost of acquisition. In essence, companies must understand the basics of starting up a business and efficiently calculate whether Gloucester fits within their plans.
The Wider Business Landscape
As mentioned previously, in order for businesses to thrive, the basics of B2C and B2B must be implicated in the context of their base point and population. This is especially true when considering how quickly things can change in business. 
Looking again at Gloucester’s confidence rate, the outlook for wage and price pressures is still elevated, and firms also reported lower concerns about staffing issues. In this way, the falling confidence only relates to a singular part of the business, whilst there are many other cogs in the machine that remain well-oiled and optimistic for the future.
With the wider business landscape affected by rising costs, it is important even for small businesses to simply keep a tight watch on the structure of their finances and put themselves in as good a position as possible. If they do this, then, as mentioned previously, there’s every chance they will find themselves in good stead when the tide begins to turn.
